3D Cameras: 3D Computer Vision of Wide Scope

摘要

First of all, a short comparison of range sensors and their underlying principles was given. The chapter further focused on 3D cameras. The latest innovations have given a significant improvement for the measurement accuracy, wherefore this technology has attracted attention in the robotics community. This was also the motivation for the examination in this chapter. On this account, several applications were presented, which represents common problems in the domain of autonomous robotics. For the mapping example of static scenes, some difficulties have been shown. The low range, low apex angle and low dynamic range compared with 3D laser scanners, raised a lot of problems. Therefore, laser scanning is still the preferred technology for this use case. Based on the first experiences with the Swissranger SR-2 and the ICP based object localization, we will further develop the system and concentrate on the reliability and the robustness against inaccuracies in the initial pose estimation. Important for the reliability is knowledge about the accuracy of the determined pose. Indicators for this accuracy are, e.g., the number of matched points of the object data or the mean distance between found modelscene point correspondences. The feature tracking example highlights the potential for dynamic environments. Use cases with requirements of dynamic sensing are predestinated for 3D cameras. Whatever, these are the application areas 3D cameras were once developed. Our ongoing research in this field will concentrate on dynamic sensing in future. We are looking forward to new sensor innovations!